Jason Chen

The picture you're looking at on the left is the tip of a tungsten needle, which happens to be the sharpest object ever made by man. How sharp is it? Well, you see those red and black orbs? Those are ATOMS! And the tip of the needle? One single atom.

Postdoc Moh'd Reqeq at the University of Alberta and the National Institute of Nanotechnology made this through a process that involves electric fields and crazy chemical reactions. We hear Reqeq's inspiration for this came from the combination of a fellow postdoc accidentally eating his lunch and watching too many episodes of HBO's Oz. Let's see of James forgets whose lunch is his once he gets a tungsten shiv in his side. – Jason Chen